11 November 2011; Fort Lauderdale, USA.

 On the 11th of the 11th, in the 11th year of the 21st century, we approached Fort Lauderdale pilot station. As we had an early morning arrival, I could not try to get the pilot on at exactly 11 past 11 in the morning. That would have looked quite impressive in the log book; all those 1’s in a row. During the night it got indeed a bit wobbly, courtesy of the NNW wind blowing against the sea being pushed north by the Gulfstream. Then you can get a sort of short chop that does not make the ship pitch or roll but gives a movement best compared with a car driving over un-even cobble stones. As the wind pushes against the waves it neutralized some of the Gulf Stream current and instead of the normal 3 knots in the axes of the Stream we only experienced 1, barely 2 knots. At lot less than I had been hoping for, so I had to keep the engines going full out all the way to the pilot station. The pilot hopped on board right on time and 5 minutes later she had the conn and we were sailing into port. The Noordam was preceding us and I like to have a ship ahead of me, as it normally takes care of moving any small boats out of the fairway that might be there. And so it worked this time, except one. As soon as the Noordam had passed, one sport fisherman returned to his favourite spot – right in the middle of the fairway – and stayed there. While we were bearing down on him, the pilot boat was frantically trying to get him to move. Eventually he went but only when we were nearly on top of him. I would NOT be very happy to stay in a spot where you see 58,000 tons of cruise ship bearing down upon you but he did not seem to mind. My father in law used to say: “They are out there…… you just have to find them”. We found one this morning.

 By 06.30 we were all fast, the shore gangway was connected and the whole circus, called Holland America change over day, could start. Today we had a large influx of service engineers coming on board, for repairs, maintenance, check ups or installing new things. To such an amount that the total count was over a 100. The majority of those are regulars, who come each call to look after their machinery. Our juice machines are installed by Vitality and we also have a service contract with them, so each Florida call they return to check the machines and maintain where needed. Same for a company called Ecolab, who delivers most of the bio-friendly cleaning products we use on board. That is dispensed from their own built machines so they look after them as well. In the Engine Room we had technicians on board who checked the oil content meters. When we clean bilges, we are allowed to discharge the water as long as the oil has been filtered out. To ensure that is done properly we have meters on the discharge pipe which, when going into alarm, close the discharge valve and re-direct the bilge water for re-processing. Vital instruments that need to be looked after as well. And do not forget the piano tuner. Each home port we hear the ping, ping, ping all over the ship. Apart from the use, the AC also affects the tone and thus the man has to come in on a regular basis.

While they where all doing their usefull things I was involved in P.R activities. As mentioned many times before, we try to donate everything we can, that is still good but not used anymore on board. Today our 3rd shipment of matrasses was exchanged and a truck picked 88 of them up. According to the local representative they were going straight to the port for transport to Haiti, to be used by the welfare organizations there. So it was picture taking time for the company, to properly document it, and my presence was required. That followed by a video recording on the bridge, of which the results you will eventually see on the Hal Blog.

Today was of course also Remembrance day and veteran’s day. That put me in a bit of a quandary as there was not a  good or appropriate moment during the day to pay the proper respect. Also the guests, being harried, tired and to a certain extent unsettled by the new surroundings, would not be ready to muster the interest and time. So I decided to postpone it to the 13th. of November, where we will conduct a short ceremony in the Showroom at Sea, for those guests and crew willing to attend.

Fuel loading in Fort Lauderdale. Here we do not use barges but a shore side pipe line system. At the pier a pump manifold regulates the loading pressure and from there it goes on board. A licensed engineer is constantly present to overview the situation so that no spills will occur.

We left at 1700 hrs. with all on board and 1200 tons of HFO fuel in the tanks (at a price of $ 816.468,–) ready to commence our cruise to San Diego. We will have some wobbly weather tonight as the wind will be pushing on the portside stern and this ship does not like that very much, so we will wobble a little bit even with the stabilizers out.